IBM’s inaugural Build-a-Bot Challenge featured some groundbreaking RPA solutions.

Imagine an RPA bot facilitating a virtual food bank or COVID-19 vaccinations and testing. Last month, over 200 participants in the inaugural IBM Build-a-Bot Challenge created these types of robotic process automation (RPA) solutions to improve the workplace and improve the world. 

Like us, these entrants recognized that the past year has dramatically accelerated the digitization of new business models and have embraced IBM Robotic Process Automation as a solution to easily and quickly automate more business and IT processes across the organization. 

This broad adoption of our full-featured, AI-driven RPA offering helped earned placement in the 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Robotic Process Automation for the first time. Recognition in the Magic Quadrant merely a year after announcing a definitive agreement to acquire RPA provider WDG Automation validates our forward-looking strategy and market traction. Gartner cited IBM’s particular strengths in artificial intelligence (AI), process mining and partner network. 

Another unique strength of IBM RPA is its hybrid cloud approach. The SaaS edition of the product has a hybrid architecture/topology designed with scalability and security in mind. This feature saves company labor expenses because it no longer needs to administer (e.g., monitor, patch, maintain hardware) the cloud portion of the software.

Watch the webinar replay

Check out the replay of our webinar to learn more about how the two $10,000 winners of the Build-a-Bot Challenge used these capabilities to design their IBM RPA software bots. Congratulations to the visionaries who had only 30 days to deliver upon their solution to make a positive impact on the world.

Best Workplace Improvement Solution

  • Submission: IBM RPA bot to automate receipts submission and expense reporting
  • Design Team: David Kaufman, Paul Hofle, Nathaniel Watkins, Maksim Chepel and Justin Irazabal, Cedrus Digital 

IBM RPA Solution to Address a Social Challenge

  • Submission: IBM RPA bot for Virtual Food Bank Program
  • Designer: Wei Lai, Perficient 

Learn more

Learn more about IBM Robotic Process Automation, where you will find videos, case studies and access to a 30-day, no-cost trial.

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

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